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EVENT DESCRIPTION
In celebration of the annual Swire Properties Arts Month, ArtisTree is pleased to unveil ArtisTree Selects: Urban Rocks, a contemporary art exhibition featuring brand new sculptural works by Hong Kong-based French artist Polo Bourieau (b. 1968, Nantes, France) running from 16 March to 9 April 2023.
Curated by Hong Kong-based curator Alison Pickett, ArtisTree Selects: Urban Rocks is Polo Bourieau’s largest solo exhibition to date, debuting a collection of 12 new stone sculptures made in the intimacy of his Tuscan workshop in Pietrasanta, Italy, in 2021. His creations are inspired by Chinese scholars’ rocks and the way they were shaped and formed by the forces of nature. Throughout the formation process over millennia, these abundances of rocks witnessed the most furious, ragging, and cataclysmic conditions that the planet can offer. Profiling a metaphor for humanity’s indelible mark on the planet, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the meaning of human existence, the impact we make on the modern world, and the fears in the age of Anthropocene.
ArtisTree Selects: Urban Rocks is also part of Swire Properties’ Placemaking approach to progressively advocate Taikoo Place as an inspiring, sustainable and enjoyable workplace, both vital to the health of communities and our society. ArtisTree Selects is a series of specially commissioned and curated programmes at Taikoo Place’s multipurpose space ArtisTree, introducing original and thought-provoking arts and culture exhibitions and performances that are easily accessible by the public.
Polo is also influenced by Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities), and presents his collection of sculptures exquisitely for the ArtisTree Selects programme as ‘worlds of dreams, architectures and landscapes, spaces of memories and maps of desires’. Every piece in the collection was carved from a single piece of stone sourced internationally – France, Italy, Spain, Iran and the Kurdistan region. He designed, shaped, hand-carved and hand-polished the sculptures himself using cutting edge technologies, each narrating a fictitious story of its own in twelve different manners. His creative process also poetically portraits the contrast of using tools of the present to change the face of the materials created from the past.
As an object for meditation, scholars’ rocks were believed to be imbued with primordial energies capable of dynamic transformations, offering imaginary journeys to mystical peaks and cave paradises. ArtisTree Selects: Urban Rocks transcends a powerful imaginary travel in its unique way; a parallel contemporary world that comprises stones created and transformed by the hands of a man, rather than nature on this occasion.
In the exhibition, the sculptures are placed in a circular display – a shape with no beginning or ending, adding a sense of mystery and serenity to the installation. It invites visitors to contemplate through exploring the dialogue between the earthly element and man-made art. It is a powerful experience traversing the dimension between fantasy and reality, and to ponder the footprint we as human creates to places where we call home.
ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER
Born in 1968 in Nantes, France, Polo Bourieau studied art at the Academie of Nantes before joining the French stonemasons guild Compagnons du Tour de France. By formation, inclination and ability, Polo focuses a great measure of his creative effort in rekindling the natural relationship between sculpture and architecture through large site-specific commissions.
Polo developed a new formal language of the sculptural perception borrowed from our contemporary digital distorted world, combining engineering calculations, traditional carving techniques and robotic experimentations. Collaborating directly with architects and developers, Polo creates monumental sculptures for the new agora of the 21st century. He believes that the monumental presence in public space confronts and creates dialogue, and it ignites our curiosity to explore the space we’re living in. It interacts with the community and contributes to understanding our concept of individuality, before defining our collective memories.
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